Monday, September 18, 2006

You Yangs and Yonder

After a few weeks of agonising over whether to buy a road bike and which one to buy, it was nice to take my old roadie out for a spin in the You Yangs and Yonder 100km on Sunday. It was another warm, still day: shorts and jersey weather.

The bunch took off at a fair pace, and I was content to let myself be dragged along at a comfortable 30km/h for the first hour or so, until we stopped at the checkpoint on top of the You Yangs. I don't like to stop for long at checkpoints - especially so soon into a ride - so I was off again on my own shortly after, content to spend some time on my own and to chat with the faster riders as they passed. Most people were doing the 150km option but I only needed a century for one of the audax awards I'm going for which requires 5x100km rides. Besides, there was a monster hill in the 150km, and I'd promised to be home for lunch.

It turned out to be a very quick ride, my second fastest century ever. The last 20km featured long rolling stretches with a gentle tailwind and to my surprise I was motoring along for much of in the big chainring it at around 45km/h. The last 20km took me about half an hour and I was happy to complete 102km with a riding time of 3 hours 47 minutes, for an average of 27km/h. Considering just a couple of years ago I was struggling to get home under the 6 hour 30 minute time limit, I've improved somewhat. And the old bike proved there's some life left in it yet.